Human Enhancement and Antinatalism: Philosophy as the Art of Living between Pro-extinctionism and Anti-extinctionism

Abstract Philosophy as the art of living has posed the question of the meaning of life, as well as what guarantees happiness. Life should have meaning as well as be happy. The problem addressed herein is the threshold question of whether initiating or continuing life is morally permissible when meaning and well-being are absent or inaccessible. On this view, biomedical enhancement aids meaning and happiness only indirectly – by relieving impairment and expanding capacities it widens opportunities for agent-endorsed goods – so its benefits are conditional and the modification itself is not inherently meaning-conferring. The object of this article is to present philosophy as the art of living, which should look globally at the meaning of human existence in terms of reference to the problem of human extinction and take either an anti-extinction or pro-extinction stance. Human enhancement is definitely an anti-extinction proposition, since it is understood as a prescription for solving at least some of the problems of both the individual human being and humanity as a whole. By contrast, antinatalism, rather than denying life’s meaning, holds that initiating life is presumptively wrong because it nonconsensually exposes future persons to serious, ineliminable risks of suffering. In this article, we discuss and confront these two positions and suggest that, paradoxically, antinatalist philosophy has a strong rationale for being understood as an art of living that exposes the inadequacy of human enhancement. The challenge, however, remains whether antinatalist philosophy, which represents a pro-extinction position, can function as an art of living in a broader, non-philosophical context. Our comparative claim does not presuppose a general mandate to minimize suffering. It rests on a non-aggregative, imposition-based permission condition for initiating life, together with asymmetric error-costs and option value under deep uncertainty.